The Enamel Mug

Whenever I visit a department store, I always take delight in seeing the enamel mugs which, pure white or creamy, are graceful in pattern and color.
In my middle school days, I preferred to use white enamelware because, like most young girls, I was very particular about cleanliness. In those days, I remember, a Swede-made pure white mug would cost five silver dollars, and it was obtainable only at a foreign firm. In 1939, a certain store in Chongqing offered for sale, at a price of course higher than in prewar days, a stock of enamel mugs they had laid in through the Yunnan-Burma highway. With the money I had raised. I asked a friend leaving for town to buy an enamel mug for me. Unfortunately, probably due to nervousness, he dropped it onto the ground the moment he stepped out of the store and had it chipped.
Afterwards I went to the anti-Japanese base area carrying with me the enamel mug with a chip in it. Unexpectedly, over there it turned out to be a multipurpose utensil. It was used for carrying water or cooked rice, for heating up food, cooking congee for sick comrade, and when necessary, as a substitute for a basin or bathtub. Thenceforth, the militant friendship between it and me became even more profound.
In 1946, when I came to Peiping, I was eager to buy a new enamel mug to replace the old one which had given me years of devoted service. But a new one was hard to come by in the then Peiping. Once, while roaming about a small market in Dongdan, I came across a pure white Swedish enamel mug at a roadside stall displaying only a handful of articles for sale. That was just what I needed. But the price asked by the woman owner of the stall was too high for me. When I bargained, I noticed tears brimming in her eyes. And then I also realized that she was sort of an educated young woman. She said what she had for sale was her personal belongings because she was badly in need of money to pay for the medical care of someone at home. Thereupon, I gave her all the money I had with me for the mug. She hoped that I would buy one more article from her. But, sympathetic as I was with her, I couldn’t buy anything else because I really had no money left in my pocket. Later, after leaving Peiping, I went through several years of the War of Liberation in company with the mug which often reminded me vividly of the tearful eyes of the young woman – tearful eyes typical of the common people of Peiping in the throes of hunger and civil war.
In 1949, I again came to live in Peiping. My husband used all his pocket money to buy me a creamy mug in commemoration of the victory of the War of Liberation. It was of US make. “All creamy ones are US products,” declared the salesman. But the mug isn’t so important to me now because firstly, at my age, I’m no longer so particular about trivial matters in my personal life, and secondly it has resumed its normal uses in peaceful urban life. Nevertheless, up to now, whenever I come across enamel mugs of any kind, I still cannot help taking a look at them. It’s because both pure white Swede-made and creamy US-made mugs have now given way in the market to Chinese products of ever increasing variety of colors and designs and much lower prices.
The woman owner of the roadside stall at Dongdan who sold me her personal mug must have long ago bought a new one of Chinese make for her own use.